Notes on meeting between Gary and Geoff Dixon - 6 March 2008

1 Launch event in June - a “tastes of “ festival, either in the Corn Hall or Fair Green. Exhibitors are professsional and amateur food providers. Add entertainment and discussion.

2 Low hanging fruit - We identified the following as good easy starting points:

• events listings - easy source of what’s on now in Diss and vicinity
• sources of local food - farmers markets & their traders, farm shops, box schemes, restaurants that feature local food
• existing organisations and groups using DissConnected.Net as an intranet
• artisan and other business listings with recommendations
• a Diss freecycle equivalent

3 Research - after a lot of discussion we concluded that we don’t really need a research effort to decide what to do as the ‘low hanging fruit’ activities are sufficient.

4 Usability is a major issue. We can make a start on exploring this using the Steering Groups working group on the website. One approach that Geoff has used is to ask some volunteers to perform specific tasks and watch them to see how they get on and where they have difficulties.

• The Home Page needs to be re-done.
• One idea is to have a separate home page without the active content.
• Anlother idea is to have the home page just full of active content. This cannot be done until we have regular streams of content.
• The best idea for the present seemed to be to use the Home Page to describe the current state and plans for development.

5 Development plan - Pulling our discussion together, this seemed the best approach:
March -

• Get the Steering Group up to speed on the website and use this as a usability exercise.
• Make small changes to the site, about us pages and improve the help pages as a result of this exercise.
• Get help with the design of an improved Home Page (maybe Julie Dixon?)
• Develop some kind of promotional leaflet with some instructions.

April - A sprint to get lots of content

• Approach venues (pubs, village halls) and get them to add their events. Offer help if they want it.
• Approach local food sources and create pages for them.
• Begin to approach organisations/groups who might want to use the site for their own purposes.

June -

• A launch event such as a Taste of Diss festival
• A promotional campaign to launch the FREE eXchange.